6.15.2006

Let's just call it a bonding experience.

I got my first “I love you” last night. Did a 90-minute full body massage for a very nice man who comes in to the clinic regularly. The session started out the way I imagine a less-than-perfect sky dive might go, as though you’re being shoved towards the door of the plane while still pulling on your pack, and just as you line up to aim a graceful swan dive out into the great blue nowhere your boot catches a little on the floor of the plane. Not enough to put you on the path to certain death, but just enough to spill you out into the sky thinking “nice move, bonehead, it’s going to be a little tricky now to recover and make a clean landing.”

Or maybe it wasn’t like that at all. I must admit, in the interest of full disclosure that I know next to nothing about skydiving.

Just to give you an idea: Dude comes in, I was still glancing through his file when the receptionist pushed me at him, the consultation was brief and incomplete, and despite my instructions, when I entered the station he was the wrong way on the table (face up). Plus he was so tall his feet were nearly hanging off the edge, giving me little room to maneuver at that end of the room. Since we hadn’t discussed what areas needed more attention I just, kind of, went where I thought I needed to be and hoped for the best. Oh and there was the face cradle caper: I had removed the face cradle in the beginning as one does in order to execute the neck and shoulders part of the massage. Before turning him over I somehow needed to get the face cradle fitted back into the table, which involves inserting the spokes of the thing into two holes along the edge of the table. This is made more difficult when the table is already made up and the sheet is blocking the holes. And the client’s head is right there so you can’t exactly feel around the edge too much. Oh, and it’s fucking dark in the room and darkness? Is exactly the same color as a hole.

“Heh heh, you came in for the combo 82-minute massage / 8 minute face-cradle-fumble, right, sir?”

Anyway. Imagine my surprise after the session was over, when he not only gave me a perfect score on the intern evaluation sheet, but also murmured sleepily “did I mention I love you?” Aw, shucks.

When I gleefully told this to a random teacher later, she grew very still and worried. “Did he say anything else?... When did he say it?... How was he acting during the massage?... Do you need to report it?” It took me a few tries to convince her the sentence was said in a “that was fantastic” sort of way, rather than a “there are a million photos of you hanging on the walls of Mother’s basement that I gaze at while stroking my shotgun” sort of way.

At least, I hope that’s how it was meant. I should probably mention (just to keep this blog honest) that there is a small, teeny, tiny chance that I may have very accidentally touched his magillidangle at some point in the beginning of the massage.*

*I don't think that's what it was. I mean, that would make him, like, some kind of record-holder, so, no, that didn't happen. Although, that kind of size would explain why it might have been hanging where it was, intruding on my massage territory. No. I probably just brushed against some excess sheet. Except, I think I know the difference between cloth and... La la la, nope, didn't happen, no way.